The Queensland Government has legislated to make pool fence inspections mandatory. Eventually it’ll be for all pools but for now the rules apply when you sell or lease your property – and yes this includes apartments and all buildings with shared pools. From December 1^st you’ll need a government licensed inspector to issue a government prescribed certificate. This certificate will be valid for 2 years for a non-shared pool (usually in a house) and 1 year for a shared pool.

You cannot rent your property if you don’t have a certificate – you can’t even renew a current tenant’s lease. You can’t sell your property without a certificate – unless your buyer’s prepared to wear an obligation to get it done within 90 days and cop any costs for compliance. Remember the first part of this legislation increased the minimum standards for fences so if your pool’s more than 5 or 6 years old there’s a good chance it might not comply. Those self-closing doors off livings rooms are now non-compliant for example.

Please talk to your property manager urgently about this one. For example if your tenant’s lease is renewed by November 30^th you should be okay.

The good news is shared pools have a 2 year phase-in period. Bad news for those of you who own a house with a pool is that, according to the REIQ last week, the government has yet to issue one single license to a pool fence inspector. There’s going to be a mad scramble to get certificates issued and all as the holiday shutdown approaches.

This is the same government department that gave us the Sustainability Declaration on January 1^st this year, in a colossal mismanagement of timings and public communication. Now they’re achieving the same sort of confusion and concern on a grand scale. Happy Christmas Minister.

The legislation won’t be passed until September but from December 1^st it looks certain you’ll need a pool fence inspection if you want to sell or rent your property. A qualified inspector will need to check it and issue a compliance certificate, and you’ll need to do any works to bring it up to today’s laws. So for example those self-closing doors on the living room won’t be enough any more. Your certificate will need reissuing every 2 years and body corps will be required to have an annual inspection.

Our suggestion: get these underway well before December because you won’t be allowed to sign a lease or a sale contract without your certificate and the inspectors are going to be a tad busy. Watch the small print too – any body of water more than 300mm deep that’s kept full and usually used for swimming will be captured. Visit the website or talk to your property manager now.

Landlords might like to keep an eye on further changes in the wind. We expect you’ll be required to prepare a Sustainability Declaration from mid 2011 to show any prospective tenant if the home’s energy efficient etc. And in a controversial move the tenancy lobby groups are currently arguing for an end to giving tenants a “notice to leave without grounds”. So landlords may lose the ability to choose who lives in their property. If you’d like to have a say on this one why not send the Housing Minister an email? It’s Karen Struthers at communityservices@ministerial.qld.gov.au

Like to have a rant on these issues?! Make a comment.

Last Friday night we met with a couple who wanted to buy their first home. It’s 7pm at the home’s kitchen bench, another offer’s been received, the auction’s the next day, so no time to waste. And out we come with the 5 documents over 22 pages. Nervous do you think? Do they understand fully the details and implications? Is it a fair environment to put anyone in?

Surely consumer protection is firstly about informing people? How can they be fairly informed by 22 pages of reading on a Friday night? And this isn’t including the 2 page Sustainability Declaration the seller’s provided or the building and pest inspections they still need done. Or the title/council/body corp/main roads/EPA/flooding etc searches their solicitor will ask them to check.

One option being canvassed is the idea of a disclosure document, prepared and paid for by a seller before they put their property on the market. Kind of like a “roadworthy” you need before you can sell your car. It could include all the usual info and even a building and pest report, and be available to each and every buyer when they first enquire. If you don’t understand something, you can ask your lawyer/valuer/townplanner/banker/Uncle Jack before you decide to buy…

Then we can have simple contracts that everyone can follow.

What do you think of this idea? Got another solution to the masses of contract paperwork?We’d love to hear your comments.

The Minister says he listened to all our concerns and has now produced a document that doesn’t need expert help to complete. “All of these are simple questions that can be answered through a basic household inspection by the homeowner,” he said.

We don’t quite agree. A quick once around our office and we weren’t 100% on what an “evaporative airconditioner” was, nor did we know how to check how many stars our kitchen sink taps would rate.

But they’ve got rid of heaps of nonsense questions that simply weren’t getting answered anyway. So yes, it’s an improvement and we do agree with helping educate home-owners on sustainable housing options. You have to start somewhere.

Now if you’ll excuse me I’ve got to go and bin a ream of copy paper, all those out of date Sustainability Declarations!

You can see from the amount of commentary on our previous blog posts the level of opposition this has created.

What you have to love is the way government can make the simplest thing so damn complicated. After plenty of stick about been hard for home-owners to complete the form the department has now released a guide to help.

All 8 pages of it!

We attended a Department information session today and one thing’s become very clear: this is a Government rush job of mammoth proportions!

On 3 fairly significant issues the Department couldn’t provide an answer – they still haven’t fully digested their own legislation. For example, they couldn’t tell the meeting if you need to mention the body corp pool when you sell your apartment. House yes, apartment “we’ll have to get back to you”.

A  building inspector spoke up to advise that his insurers can’t yet confirm if they’ll cover him for completing a Sus Dec. So his industry is not going to be an easy solution for completing the form, at least in the short term.

The Department did make one thing very clear though: if a seller is unsure about an item then they can leave it blank. When asked if that meant all boxes blank could still be a valid form the answer was yes.

There is to be no penalty relating to the form other than for failing to complete one prior to offering the property for sale. And even then we understand it will be up to local governments to enforce….

The Department say the form is to help buyers compare homes and weigh up their sustainability features. It’s an “education and marketing tool”.

And we agree with the sentiment behind that.

What a shame the government didn’t spend the time educating the marketplace and industry before rushing this in. The risk now is the Declaration will become a low-value sheet of process, most of them largely incomplete, and it will lose its real value.

Love to hear your comments.

In an “innovative and nation-leading sustainable housing policy” our Minister for Infrastructure and Planning has introduced a mandatory Sustainability Declaration. From January 1st 2010 every seller of a residential dwelling in Queensland will have to fill in a 2 page checklist.

But don’t worry, the Minister says it’s “simple” and “user-friendly”…. Have a look at the draft Sustainability Declaration for yourself.

I had a go at doing one for my house and completed just 13 of 31 questions.  I didn’t know if my shower heads were WELS 3 or WELS 4 rated. And I didn’t know what the “R-value” of my ceiling insulation would be either….

To be fair we agree there needs to be a bigger focus on energy use in existing housing. But these questions are going to take sellers some time and create another hurdle to selling.

You won’t be able to advertise your place for sale until you have a Sus Dec and your agents must display it at open homes and advertise to prospective buyers that it’s available. It looks like the penalty for not doing this will be $2000 for you and $10,000 for your agent…. so if you’re thinking of selling after Christmas you might need to read up on this.

We’re guessing that most sellers will pay a building inspector to complete the form, especially in Brisbane’s inner city where many homes are rented and their investor-owners barely know the property.

Will this create a new value and ‘point of difference’ for homes with extra features and bring a higher focus to sustainability? Maybe. But given the time/cost impost on sellers, and the very small percentage that will be fully completed, we’re not sure it’s a worthwhile change at all.

The government is not even going to collect the data. That might have been useful – they could target their campaigns/incentives at getting home owners to upgrade the items that really make a difference.

We’d be interested to hear your comments…